Birders: The Central Park Effect
A Film by Jeffrey Kimball
Music Box Films, 2012
On occasion an individual has a vision coupled with the ability and drive to translate their vision into something we can all feel and understand. Jeffrey Kimball, Society member and former Council member, has done this in his excellent film Birders: The Central Park Effect. Jeff shot, wrote the narration, produced, and directed the film, scheduled to be shown at the Society’s meeting on January 8, 2013. Daniel Baer edited the film. Jeff’s wife, Pamela Hogan, and Tom Casciato are the executive producers. Since starting the film five years ago, Jeff has been totally committed to it. Working about half of each year on the film for the first four years, he took out a bank loan in the fifth year so he could work full time on the film and finish it.
In his film Jeff highlights the green habitat that is Central Park in the midst of Manhattan’s concrete pavements and buildings. It is an area for recreation for New Yorkers, as well as a valuable habitat for migrant and resident birds. Jeff concentrates on the birds and birders in Central Park. His camera work is excellent. His narration and dialogue lead the viewer though the park in different seasons of the year, underlining through remarks by the people birding in the park, what a wonderful habitat it is for birds and birders.
Jeff was born in San Francisco and grew up in the Bay area. In high school he played drums in a band, but said he didn’t have a sense of rhythm. He also tried acting, but felt self-conscious in front of a camera. He went to Stanford for his undergraduate work. The summer between high school and college was a turning point for him. He became aware that what he really wanted to do was go into film. That summer he discovered three films, among the many he watched, that he found fascinating: A Clockwork Orange, Casablanca, and Chinatown. He found a different thing interesting in each. In A Clockwork Orange he admired how the music and visuals were used to create a technical tour de force. Casablanca had a compelling story and in Chinatown the camera work and music were skillfully combined to create a mood. That fall he entered college and took a course in film aesthetics. Later his first film production course was in the making of documentaries.
At twenty-five Jeff came to New York to enter New York University for his Master of Fine Arts in film. He met his wife, Pamela Hogan, who makes documentaries, in the larger film community of New York City. While living and working in New York, Jeff still does a lot of work in California, returning to San Francisco several times a year. When he began working he worked in editing rooms for a variety of types of films before doing music for feature films. He organized the music for among others, Good Will Hunting, A Bronx Tale, Flirting with Disaster, and Swingers.
While in New York Jeff signed up for Joe DiCostanzo’s American Museum of Natural History bird walks in Central Park. He was delighted at the number of birds it was possible to see there every day. During the winter after he joined Joe’s walks, Chuck McAlexander called him and asked him if he wanted to go birding in the park in January. Jeff must have hesitated, because Chuck assured him you could see birds in Central Park in the winter. They saw twenty-six species that day. Again, Jeff was impressed and excited that here was a place in the middle of New York City where you could see birds any day of the year and both his wife and Tom Casciato told him he had reached a stage where he was in a position to make a movie on the birds of Central Park. And so it began…
Jeff knew he wanted to film many birds for his production, and thought he might have to film birds in other places, and then include them by noting that they were also found in Central Park. As he worked he found there was no need to film elsewhere and he took many beautiful shots of birds, all in Central Park. After two years he had enough footage of birds for the film and began filming people birding in Central Park. There were definitely talking points he hoped to bring out in interviewing birders in the park and wrote out questions before he met people to walk and talk in the park. Sometimes he was surprised by the answers he elicited. When I saw the film I was impressed by how articulate the people involved were, which, in part, is a tribute to Jeff’s skilled questioning in combination with excellent editing by Daniel Baer. Jeff said often the characters in the film came together in the editing room. All the people in the film sound natural and seem to be enjoying themselves.
In the first version of the film there was no narration. Those who attended a screening in 2011 thought narration would help to move visuals along, as for example, to make changes in seasons clear. Jeff world premiered his film at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin Texas in mid-March of 2012. HBO picked up the domestic TV rights to his film for a year. HBO will be premiering the film on July 16, 2012 at 9:00 pm. It will then be available on HBO On Demand. They have exclusive rights for six months and after that it can be shown on iTunes or available on DVD. A number of other groups have expressed an interest in Birder’s: The Central Park Effect, so stay tuned.
Jeff fits birding in when traveling with his family by birding early and returning in time to have breakfast with everyone. When his sixteen year old son, Ryder, saw Birder’s: The Central Park Effect, he said: “I get it, I get why you do it.” which pleased Jeff because he is concerned people understand the importance of parcels of land like Central Park and the value to humans and to wildlife in saving them. Jeff’s stepson, Aaron Profumo, will enter the Yale Drama School this fall, an exciting step for the whole family. Who knows, in the future Jeff and his stepson may meet on a set on opposite sides of the camera!
When Jeff finished Birders: The Central Park Effect he treated himself to a trip to Texas where he saw seventeen life birds.
As noted above, Geoffrey Nulle has scheduled a showing of Birders: The Central Park Effect for the Linnaean meeting on January 8, 2013. It is a documentary that has never been done before; a film you shouldn’t miss. Bring your friends. If they are not birders they will see an aspect of the park new to them. If they are birders they will appreciate Jeff’s focus on the park as a wonderful place for birds and birders, something to be valued and protected!